


Ring the bells that still can ring

by redjacket



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, More Like Hurt/Relatively Little Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 10:57:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15604794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redjacket/pseuds/redjacket
Summary: Steve doesn't make it to the plane.He lives.It is not a happy story.





	Ring the bells that still can ring

**Author's Note:**

> Written for day four of the [Wondertrev Love Week, prompt: hurt/comfort.](https://wondertrevnet.tumblr.com/post/175651939595/wondertrev-love-week-2018-4-11-august)
> 
> I may have forgotten to add the comfort.

“Is it flammable, Chief?” Steve asked.

“Yes, you said it’s hydrogen. It’s flammable,” Chief answered.

Steve made sure his gun was loaded, his choice made.

“I need you guys to clear me a path to that plane,” Steve said.

He ran forward, confident that the way would be clear.

—

Before Steve could even get close to the plane, Charlie went down, grabbing his leg and cursing.

“Go!” he bellowed, urging Steve on even as grasped helpless for his gun. “Go! Stop it!”

Steve tried but the way wasn’t clear. There were more German soldiers than they were expecting. Sameer tried but he couldn’t take them alone. Steve shot one and tried to keep running. A bullet grazed his leg but Steve managed to keep going. But then another German soldier stood in front of him and Steve had to kill him to pass him

The plane was speeding down the runaway. It was too far away. He kept running, knowing he would never make it. He had to make it.

It was gone.

Steve’s calf burned where the bullet had grazed him and his chest heaved but they had no time to waste. He turned and ran back to Sameer, crouched over Charlie. There was a German soldier laying wounded a few feet away from them.

Steve changed his course. The man had been shot in the stomach – he was already dead and he would die in agony as his guts spewed in to each other. His body just hadn’t caught up to it yet.

Steve drew his pistol and loomed over the man. 

“Are there any other planes?” Steve barked in German. “Fighters. Reconnaissance. Anything.”

“Fuck you,” the dying man spat.

Steve didn’t have time for this. Every second, the plane got further away. He crouched beside the man and drove his hand against his wound hard.

The man screamed.

“Where are the planes?” Steve demanded. “This is madness. You’ve lost! This is indiscriminate killing _women_ and _children._ ”

“No other planes!” the dying man moaned, writhing. He grimaced, his mouth open wide. There was blood in his teeth. “We only needed one!”

Steve stood up. He felt sick. There was blood on the heel of his palm.

He lifted his gun and shot the man in the head.

Sameer and Chief were dragging Charlie from the runway. Steve ran after them.

“You see any other planes?” Steve demanded.

“Only one they cannibalized for parts,” Sameer said. He grabbed Steve’s arm. His eyes were desperate. “Steve...”

“I’m going to radio Flying Corps Command,” Steve said. “See if they can shoot down over the channel or...or somewhere less populated.”

He clasped Sameer and the shoulder and looked at Chief. Finding a line to any kind of BEF Command in a base full of Germans was less certain to get him killed but still risky.

“Take care of Charlie,” Steve said, before taking off again.

His leg was burning by the time he found a line that actually worked. Most of them had been cut or destroyed in the fighting. He had taken another glancing shot, this one to his arm, but that was fine. He could still make a fist, it just hurt, and it wasn’t the one he used to fire his gun.

He got through to the Royal Flying Corps in the end. He even spoke to a commander he had worked with, someone who trusted his judgement.

They were going to try to bring the plane down. There were no guarantees. This was like nothing any of them had ever seen before.

Steve hung up. He was starting to feel woozy and when he looked out to the tarmac, everything was on fire. It felt like the whole world was burning, it felt like it had been for years.

Steve forced himself to straighten, Charlie and Sameer and Chief would need help. Diana would...

Steve felt sick to his stomach. He couldn’t think of Diana. He had failed her. Failed everyone.

He walked out of the building – a garage he thought – as it began to go up in flames.

He spotted her then. Dr. Maru. The woman who had caused all this suffering. A woman who caused _nothing_ but suffering and death.

She was right there, in the cab of a truck, about to escape again and go on to make more gas bombs to kill more men and women and _children_.

Steve already knew if those bombs fell on London, the war would go on for _years_ more _._ The British wouldn’t be satisfied until Germany was razed to the ground and with more and more American troops joining the line every day...it would be catastrophic. It would be never ending.

It would be worse if she escaped, if the threat of more bombs, new gasses was left hanging over all their heads. They had destroyed the warehouse with her supply, destroyed her notes and workshop.

All that was left was her.

Steve raised his gun. He saw the moment she noticed him – too late – saw the surprise in her eyes.

Steve wasn’t as good a shot as Charlie but he was better than most at close range. He shot twice just to be sure. The window shattered and a spray of blood stained the car seat.

Dr. Poison slumped over behind the wheel of the truck, dead.

Steve didn’t feel anything but the panic that still clawed at his heart. The plane was a speck nearing the horizon. If the Corps could get enough people in the air, if they could keep it from deploying any of the bombs, maybe they could minimize the casualties...

Steve had been exposed on the tarmac too long, an easy target when the rest of the world was on fire and too big for an enlisted man to comprehend. Someone took the easy shot. Steve was taken by surprise as another bullet struck him, this one hitting its mark in his thigh and driving a shout from him as it sent him down to the tarmac.

Steve could hear the German soldiers coming closer now. He would hear the click of guns being readied. He tried to drag himself up. He wanted to die with his head up, if that was all he got, he wanted...

Something grabbed him roughly and pulled him away, deposited him in a heap between the feet of two gods. The world was burning around them and Ares was shouting something about the weakness and failure of men.

He was right, Steve had failed.

Steve looked at Diana, alight with power, fearsome and terrible. She was a god, she had always been a god, and he couldn’t even begin to understand the power she had.

But she was also Diana of Themyscira. And Steve loved her wholly, beyond all reason.

He knew she wasn’t meant to destroy. That wasn’t her choice.

“Diana,” Steve whispered. It wasn’t begging – Ares would have liked him to be begging. Steve didn’t need to beg. He believed in Diana, he knew her heart.

Her name sat in his mouth like a prayer.

Ares roared, enraged. Steve felt himself choking for a moment, there was a clash of giants above him, and he was tossed away like a rag doll.

Sprawled at the edge of the pavement, grass just beyond his reach, consciousness slipped and the sound of Diana shouting his name followed him down into the dark.

—

Steve woke up slowly. His head felt foggy and his whole body ached with an unrelenting throb. It took him long moments to realize where he was – in a bed, with Charlie, he thought, snoring beside him – but he didn’t have the luxury of having forgotten what happened, not even for a second.

“Steve’s awake,” he heard Chief say.

Steve forced his eyes open. It took a moment for his vision to clear. The dizziness did not leave him. Diana’s face quickly swam into view.

“Steve,” she said, her voice full of worry. She touched his face and despite himself Steve exhaled in relief.

It didn’t last for long. “How long have I been out?”

“A few hours,” Chief said.

Steve curled his fingers around Diana’s hand, holding on. She squeezed back. “Have we–Have we heard anything? About the plane?”

There was a silence that lasted too long. Steve couldn’t stand it.

“Help me up,” he requested, looking at Diana. Her eyes were full of sympathy and worry and anger and fear and...love.

Steve felt guilty about how relieved he felt to still see that.

Sameer leaned over the bed, attempting to get him to stay still by giving him the information he needed. “We tried to raise someone a couple hours ago but couldn’t get through. Not even Etta–”

Out of the corner of his eye, Steve saw Chief shift and realized that was something they hadn’t been planning to remind him of. Steve’s whole body went cold. As if he could have forgotten.

“How many hours have I been out?” Steve asked, firmly. He didn’t wait for them to answer. He looked at Diana and asked again: “Help me sit up.”

Diana did. Steve’s stomach roiled. He closed his eyes for a minute and gingerly touched the bandage that was wrapped around his head.

“You hit your head when Ares...” Diana faltered.

“Tossed me away?” Steve supplied. He forced his eyes open and managed a tiny smile for her.

Diana nodded. Steve fumbled for her hand again. “I missed how that ended.”

“Ares is gone,” Diana told him. “I defeated him.”

Steve knew better than to nod. “That’s...that’s good.”

He didn’t want to kill whatever faith in humanity Diana had managed to maintain or find again but he was struggling to find the right words to tell her that was not going to be enough.

“You do not believe that will matter,” Diana said. She was watching him so carefully and Steve was so far from his best. He never seemed to be able to hide things from her the way he could from others.

“Not if any of those bombs fall on London,” Steve said grimly.

It didn’t have to be London. Steve closed his eyes and took a shaky breath. He could picture the flight plan in his mind’s eye: all the towns and cities it passed over.

German cities were starting to starve but there would be no peace if they launched a gas attack against a city in Britain.

Diana’s hand cupped his cheek. He could feel her leaning close to him. He couldn’t tell if it made it harder or easier to breath. He needed a clearer head, he needed the strange fuzziness to go away.

“Steve?”  

Steve took a breath and forced his eyes open again. It was hard to keep them open. Diana had defeated Ares but Steve...Steve had failed his mission.

He had to find out what the fallout from that was.

“We need to know what happened to that plane,” Steve said. “Where are we?”

There was a hesitation but Sameer, at least, was used to following his lead. He spoke when Diana and Chief remained silent. “One of Chief’s hideouts. It’s the cellar of a, well, it was a house. We’re a few miles from the line. German side.”

“We need to get back to the other side. Do we know who is holding it?” Steve asked.

“The front lines are held by the British,” Chief said. “But the Canadians are in the rear.”

That meant a push had been planned, probably for if the armistice fell through or the Germans tried anything. God.

“Boss,” Sameer said, crouching in front of him and drawing Steve’s attention. “We can’t move Charlie. Not yet.”

“You are not going anywhere either,” Diana said vehemently.

Sameer grimaced and Steve smiled humourlessly. Sameer knew that Steve would more likely be swayed by worry over Charlie’s well-being than his own.

But he hadn’t tried to put any weight on his leg yet. Grazes were one thing. He hadn’t managed to stand after that last shot and he imagined since then Chief had dug a bullet out of his thigh.

They still needed information.

“I don’t think we should split up,” Sameer said, reading Steve’s thoughts. “I don’t like it.”

“I can scout ahead,” Chief said. “Steve’s right. We need to know what’s coming.”

Sameer did not look happy; Diana less so. Steve just nodded. “Okay.”

Both Sameer and Diana looked even less happy at how easily Steve had given in. They weren’t wrong to be suspicious. Steve was aware of his current limitations – he also knew he had to think about what would happen next.

That they had heard nothing, that they hadn’t been able to raise Etta...

A terrible feeling was solidifying in Steve’s heart.

Chief moved around the room, gathering what he needed. When he was ready to go, he turned and looked at them. Steve was well aware of what a sorry sight he must make, what all of them except Diana must make. Sameer wasn’t injured but his clothing was singed and everything still smelt like fire.

“Good luck,” Steve told him.

“Bring back good news,” Sameer said.

“I don’t need luck,” Chief said, with a small smile for Steve. He didn’t say anything about what kind of news he would return with.

Diana let go of Steve’s hand to go to Chief. They clasped forearms and something passed between them but Steve was too woozy to figure it out. Waves of exhaustion were starting to weigh him down.

As soon as Chief was gone, Sameer started trying to cajole him. “Hey, boss. Come on and lie down. It will take him time to go and come back.”

It would and Sameer was right. Steve would need to be ready to go by then. He would need to rest beforehand.

But first he needed to figure out exactly how bad his injuries were.

“In a minute, Sami,” Steve said. He looked to Diana. Her eyes were dark and troubled. Steve wished mankind was what she had believed them to be.

He wished four years of war hadn’t taught him otherwise.

That didn’t mean he was giving up.

Steve reached out a hand to her. “Help me up. Just for a minute.”

“No, Steve, you shouldn’t–” Sameer began.

“One lap around the room,” Steve said. It would tell him all he needed to know. He didn’t look at Sameer when he said it. He kept his eyes on Diana. “Please.”

Diana moved to his side silently. She looked at him, her eyes intent. Steve wished he could tell what she saw. He wished he didn’t feel like his thoughts were moving through swamp water.

Diana helped him to his feet, her arm an anchor around his waist, the only thing keeping him from listing to the side and falling. Her grip on him only gentled when he stifled a pained groan.

Steve waited, it took longer than he would have liked for the room to stop spinning and settle.

When it did, he forced himself to take a step.

\--

Steve woke up to the feeling of wood against his back and an unsteady, jostling motion. His mouth was dry and his head felt like it had been crammed full of stuffing. He felt worse, not better than before and he was covered by some sort of heavy blanket.

He dragged his heavy hand up, over his mouth, panic threatening to choke him. He was going to have to move and it was going to hurt and making a sound could see him killed.

The blanket moved before he could move and Sameer wedged in beside him.

“Diana said you were awake,” Sameer told him. “Here.”

He helped Steve drink some water. The motion of the...cart? carrying them did not slow.

“You gave me morphine,” Steve said, accusingly.

“For the journey. We needed you and Charlie to stay silent and it would have been excruciating,” Sameer told him. “And you’re going to need the rest more than you know.”

Steve’s breath caught. “There’s news.”

Sameer realized his mistake. “Steve...”

“No,” Steve said. “Tell me.”

“I think...”

Steve couldn’t stand it. “Is Etta dead?”

Sameer was silent for a long time. Steve’s question was answered, but Sameer still had the compassion to tell him, with a trembling voice: “Yes. We...we think so.”

Steve couldn’t speak. Tears stung at his eyes. Sameer shifted closer to him and continued. “The Flying Corps did shoot the plane. It exploded but not before some of the bombs were released. Not many, as far as we can tell. But enough. One struck near Parliament. It was still night, hardly anyone was there.”

“But Etta stayed overnight when she was running my missions,” Steve said. “She had a cot brought in and locked the office door.”

Steve had picked it once coming back and nearly stepped on her. They had laughed about it then. This mission had been more important than anything Steve or Etta had done before. Of course she had been there, waiting to hear from them.

Steve wondered if Ares had known that. He wondered if he had planned it.

“Yes,” Sameer said. He paused. “Causality lists haven’t been released yet but she’s missing and when we heard it hit Parliament and the surrounding neighbourhoods…”

“They’ll have to wait until the gas dissipates. It could be days before it’s confirmed,” Steve said. There were tears trickling down the side of his face. The effort to wipe them away seemed insurmountable.

And he could tell Sameer hadn’t told him everything.

“Hardly anyone was there,” Steve echoed. “Who else?”

“None of the politicians, they don’t think,” Sameer said. “But...senior members of the BEF were meeting late, trying to finish the terms of the armistice.”

Steve’s heart stopped. Ares would have had a direct hand in that.

“Haig is dead,” Sameer said. “Darnell wasn’t there but senior military leadership from the AEF and the BEF, some of the diplomats...”

Sameer trailed off. It was just about the worst case scenario short of London being wiped off the map.  

Sameer cleared his throat and kept going. “We won’t know the civilian count for...awhile. They’ve evacuated most of London. They’ll have to wait until the gas is gone.”

“We have to tell them there’s no more. That we destroyed the factory. And Maru is dead,” Steve said. Even the thought of her made him want to spit.

“Chief tried. Darnell wanted to hear from you,” Sameer said.

“That’s why we’re moving,” Steve guessed.

Sameer hesitated. “Yes.”

Steve’s heart dropped. “That’s not the only reason.”

Sameer hesitated again. “There’s. There might be a push, we think. It wasn’t safe to stay. The armistice, no one knows what’s happening.”

Steve had known that would happen, of course. He only felt despair that he had been right. “Who is in charge?”

“We don’t know,” Sameer said. “No one knows.”

\--

There was little experienced leadership left on either side. Ludendorff had executed nearly all of German High Command. Diana had killed him. Maru’s bombs had taken out much of the top military leadership from the British and American forces.

There were still the French, but neither the British nor the Americans seemed much inclined to follow their leadership. Not that they were any more inclined towards peace, not anymore.

The armistice was dead, the terms already violated. British civilian had died choking on mustard gas. American soldiers on leave had died horrible deaths in London.  

And German leadership had been decimated by the treachery of one of their own.

Steve saw the war stretching out for years more in front of them as it all unravelled.

When he finally got a call through to Darnell, Darnell had shouted at him, threatened to court martial him, praised him up and down for seeing the threat and eliminating Maru, and then ordered him to report to the new senior leader in charge of the BEF, the hastily promoted Field Marshall Currie.

The call left Steve reeling. It was the praise that threw him. He had expected everything else.

He hadn’t done anything praiseworthy. This was his fault. If he had managed to take out that plane...

Diana slipped into the ramshackle room Sameer had found for them as Steve was trying to dress for the meeting. He had had to stop and wait for a dizzy spell to pass, sitting on the edge of bed with his head in his hands. They had taken Charlie to the medics when they got to the other side of the British line. He was being sent to a hospital back of the line for the time being but Steve didn’t doubt he would he back.

Steve had had a medic take a quick look at his bullet wound and was hobbling around on a makeshift crutch until it stopped aching. They couldn’t tell him when the dizzy spells would stop. Steve had made excuses when the doctor questioned him about it too intently.

It didn’t matter. They passed. He could work through them if he had to.

He couldn’t leave now. Not when things were in such chaos.   

Diana pried his hands away from where they were clutched in his hair. She guided his head to her shoulder and rubbed slow circles on the back of his neck.

Steve felt like he might shatter in her arms.

He swallowed against his tears, instead, but let himself lean into her. They hadn’t talked about what she would do now.

Her mission had been successful, after all.

“What do you know of this man?” Diana asked when she could tell the nausea had passed. “This Currie? Is he like the last?”

“He’s...had successes,” Steve said. “Tactically, he seems better than most, from what I’ve heard. They bring the CEF in when they’re making a push but...”

But that was partly because they were colonials, and more expendable in the eyes of some of the British higher ups.

Currie was tactically smart. He had had some unlikely successes against the Germans. Steve had heard he made efforts to reduce casualties.

But any success in this war was a grinding one and came at a terribly high cost.

He told Diana as much.

“I don’t understand it,” Diana said. “I don’t understand why now, after all this death, they would not want to make peace.”

“Revenge,” Steve said. The papers and the politicians had been howling for it. The loudest voices in the peace movement had been silenced or dragged off to jail.

“Opportunity,” Steve said. Germany and Britain were both in chaos. Germany was embarrassed and defiant. Britain was enraged and knew they had the advantage. Whatever their problems on the home front were, they were better off than Germany.

And thousands of American troops were arriving, a fresh sacrifice for the maw of the trenches.

“And...” Steve swallowed. He had thought about this recently. “Ares, as Sir Patrick, he was the architect of the armistice.”

Diana stilled.

“He appealed to the all the worst parts of our nature,” Steve said. “If he was the driving force behind negotiating the peace terms, I can’t help but think they were being created to fail sooner or later.”

“Not that we need any help killing each other,” Steve said, reaching for his belt.

 Diana was quiet for a long time. Finally, she sighed. “Steve...”

 "You can’t be part of this,” Steve said. He did up his belt. His shoulders slumping. He looked away from her. “I know.”

Diana touched his cheek gently, turning his face back to look at her. She looked like she wanted to yell at him, to make him see sense. He remembered begging her to understand on the watchtower.

“Why are you?” she asked, instead.

“It’s the best way I can see to stop it,” Steve said. Diana frowned in disagreement. “No, it is. I’m...I’m a spy. The intel I’ve gotten, it’s saved lives. It’s kept offences from happening or made them less costly. And if I had stopped that plane...”

“No,” Diana said.

Steve shook his head. “The war would be over if I had stopped that plane. The war would have been over if London hadn’t been bombed. Etta would be–”

His voice cracked. Diana held him, tightly, but the anger in her voice was barely banked when she spoke. “Stop it. You would have died.”

“I wish I had, if it would have prevented this,” Steve said. He would have made that trade in a heartbeat. He would have traded his life just for Etta’s if he had been given the choice. “It doesn’t matter how – how much I love you. I can’t stand aside and do nothing. I will always make that choice.”

Diana nodded. “I know.”

Diana kissed him and Steve wanted to cry. He wanted to have this, just this. He didn’t need anything else for himself.

But he couldn’t walk away until the war was ended. He had to do whatever he could to hasten its end.

“I love you, Steve Trevor,” Diana told him, when they parted.

Steve felt like he was coming apart. He swallowed. “You might want to think about helping Chief. He’s not just a smuggler. He–”

“I know what it is Napi truly does,” Diana told him. “We have already spoken of this. And I will do everything I can to protect who cannot protect themselves in this war. Or in any other.”

“I’ll do what I can to end it quicker,” Steve promised. His heart ached.

He could have stopped it already. He could have.

His life was nothing compared to that.

\--

Field Marshall Currie liked intelligence more than most commanders – he had scandalously given his troops maps of the enemy positions to memorize before the attack in one of his great successes – but he was wary of spies. Steve had found most high-ranking officers were.

He didn’t look like a soldier – he was tall but overweight, stress Steve’s sources told him, and glum looking – but he was forthright, prepared extensively for his battles and he treated his junior officers with respect.  

He took Steve’s word about the bombs at the airfield being destroyed and nodded in approval at Dr. Maru’s death, but he was less willing to believe that had been her only store of bombs.

Steve was tasked with finding out if there were any further depots of them – and to eliminate both them and any other plants making gas bombs that he could.

The elimination of gas bombs had become a priority, after the attack on London.

Steve had asked about the armistice and the future possibility of peace as their meeting concluded. If Darnell had been at the meeting, he would have demoted him, Steve thought, but Darnell was in London, trying to do the work of ten men.

Currie looked at him – looking, for a moment, as haggard and exhausted as Steve felt – and told him the truth.

Two more years, Currie predicted, six million more dead, soldiers and civilians, and he didn’t hazard a guess at how many countries would be bankrupt or on the verge of it by the time they all agree to peace.

And that was if all went well.

He said it with a grim, matter-of-factness that made Steve certain it was true.

\--

Diana saw Steve when he came back from missions.

Each time, the war had extracted more of its price from him; each respite was too rare and too brief.

By the end of the first year, he had gone so thin, Diana thought it was only the fires of guilt and duty burning in his belly that kept him moving forward.

Those fires, she understood now, would have gotten him killed. Should have, by his tortured thinking. He never blamed anyone but himself for the London Massacre, as it had come to be known. As if he could have cleared the path to his plane alone, as if he could have controlled the Flying Corps pilots who tried to shoot it down.

As if he could fly, himself, and would not have perished in destroying it.

Ares had to be defeated, Diana did not question that. But she wondered if the cost would have been as high if she had let him escape in the moment. It might have been higher, in the end, or it might have been so much lower. There was no way to know whether it would have been possible to both save the day and purge the world of his influence.

Steve went on his missions with Sameer and Charlie. Diana did not know if she liked this new commander, Currie, any better than she had liked Haig. He still spent soldiers’ lives like they were pennies and he never led from the front. But he was willing to spend money if it meant sparing lives. Steve did not have to beg for funds as much as Diana understood he had before.

Sometimes, she wished he had, if it meant they were gone less. Instead, they were always on mission, blowing up bomb factories and coming back with intel to report and new shadows in their eyes. Charlie drank until he passed out. Sameer never spoke of acting anymore.

Steve told her the things they had done in the depths of the night, when he woke screaming from nightmares. He spoke as if he thought she would leave him, he had since the airfield. Sometimes he trembled with it.

Diana knew he remembered her battle with Ares. He had been dragged before her at the height of her rage, Ares whispering half-truths in her ears, and looked at her with absolute love, spoken her name as if he never doubted her heart for a moment.

It stung, sometimes, that he thought she would doubt his. But unlike his commanders, Diana recognized a wounded man when she saw one. He did not doubt her, he doubted himself, his own worth. Guilt gnawed at his heart and his chosen atonement came at a heavy cost.

So Steve went on his missions to blow up the terrible weapons of the war and Diana went with Napi, and they safeguarded the towns and villages and civilians who were caught beneath them.

Then Charlie was killed.

It was an ambush, Sameer told her, afterwards. The Germans had known they were coming; their covers had been blown. Not by treachery, they thought, but by their own successes. It was only possible to use so many aliases against a dwindling foe before their likenesses became known, only so many targets left, after chemical factory after chemical factory had been destroyed.

Charlie was killed and they couldn’t even bring his body home.

Steve couldn’t speak of it. He had been injured himself, had barely made it back, and Diana thought for a long time that the weight of it might kill him.

Sameer and Steve were pulled from any future missions. Sameer, only ever a hired man, joined Napi’s efforts.

Steve was an enlisted man. He didn’t have that choice. Useless as a spy, Currie made use of him as an intelligence analyst. There was no doubt he was good at it, but each causality list seemed to bring more weight down on Steve’s shoulders. It was a burden no one could carry forever.

A reason was found to discreetly discharge him. It was the only moment Diana ever found to like Field Marshall Currie.

Diana came home from shepherding refugees safely out of Turkey to find Steve there. Alone, all his duties taken from him, he had collapsed.

Diana held him as he shook and shook and shook.

The war wouldn’t end for another half a year.

—

The gas from the London Massacre had long since cleared away but there were parts of London that remained uninhabited. Some would be reclaimed in the years to come, others would remain shuttered and silent, permanent memorials to the dead.

A town in Veld, a footnote in history against the larger, more shocking atrocity, would be left to crumble.

Sameer had been unable to convince Steve to visit the memorial to Etta and the other civil servants who had been killed.

Diana hoped he would be able to persuade Steve soon. The wounds of his heart were slow to scab over and scar. He mourned Etta and Charlie like their deaths had been yesterday, like he had been unable to at the time.

And now, the war was ending.

The slaughter had been appalling. Germany was in ruins, the German people starving. France was little better, with continuous riots at home, rationing so extreme it was next to starvation and the nation completely bankrupt. Britain’s coffers and larders, too, were empty and America’s were strained to the breaking point.

And, through it all, the flu carried away those that the war spared.  

It was September 9, 1920, and peace had come through ruin, by death, destruction and disease.

Diana lay in bed beside Steve and waited. When the new armistice had been signed, it had been decided and declared on the ninth day of the ninth month at 9 a.m. in the morning, the guns would finally, finally cease.

Diana watched as the seconds ticked down on Steve’s father’s watch. It hung loose and heavy on his wrist as if it, like everything else, had become too heavy a burden for its bearer.

At 9 a.m. exactly, the bells began to toll. Sameer had told her they would be ringing all over Europe to signal the armistice.

Steve didn’t wake.

Diana didn't think he could sleep anywhere but in her arms anymore. The exhaustion he dragged with him was palpable, as if every movement he made was met with resistance.

But still, she touched his cheek and he was awake in an instance, looking around wildly. 

It was an improvement that he didn’t come up swinging. Diana still did not like how fast his heart was beating, as if it wanted to come to out of his chest.

He looked at her, uncomprehending.

“Listen,” she told him.

It took him a few moments to realize what was happening, what the sound meant. Bells were peeling all over Europe, from any church tower that was left.

Steve went slack as he heard the sounds he thought would never come. The war was over.

Steve wept. All Diana could do was hold him.

**Author's Note:**

> Uh, sorry?
> 
> The title comes from Leonard Cohen's "Anthem." 
> 
> Field Marshal Currie = General Currie who commanded the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the later part of WWI and really did have some unlikely victories that came at great cost. He also pegged his causality counts with unnerving accuracy at least once. They were high, though his philosophy was "'Pay the price of victory in shells—not lives." There is some speculation that Haig would have been sacked if the WWI went on for another year and Currie was being looked at as a replacement - but that might only be coming from Canadian scholars. 
> 
> WWI actually ended on Nov. 11, 1918 at 11 a.m. Whether anyone could have afforded it to go on for two more years, both in terms of lives and money, is highly debatable.


End file.
